1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for setting moving image/still image shooting conditions.
2. Description of the Related Art
Image pickup apparatuses such as digital video cameras or digital still cameras (to be referred to as digital cameras hereinafter) capable of shooting a moving image or still image allow the user to set various shooting conditions. The shooting conditions include, e.g., zoom, shutter speed, stop, focus, gain adjustment process for a signal output from an image sensing device, and white balance process of adjusting color mixture balance so as to exactly reproduce white portions of the object of interest. The number of items which can be set as shooting conditions are increasing along with the improvement of a digital image processing techniques. To cope with this trend, digital cameras which allow the user to set various parameters such as color gain, color phase, sharpness, and gamma are under development.
Under these circumstances, separately setting parameters for such items complicates the operations involved. It is also impractical to separately store these parameters in consideration of restoring them to values set once in the past. To solve these problems, there have been proposed techniques for storing, as a set of shooting conditions, a combination of individual parameters concerning a plurality of items and reading out the set of the shooting conditions in shooting so as to facilitate setting.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 10-178584 proposes a technique for creating a table in which image data to be recorded is registered in association with shooting conditions and displaying an image corresponding to shooting conditions to be selected by the user so as to facilitate shooting condition selection.
In general, like an Exif format, image data generated and recorded by a digital camera partially records shooting conditions of a picked-up image in its header portion.
As described above, digital video cameras have a function of automatically setting the tint and color tone of a moving image to optimum values. Some types of digital video cameras also have a shooting scene-specific setting modes so as to automatically set a tint and color tone which are suitable for the scene of interest for each mode. This function allows even a beginner inexperienced in video camera operation to easily use such device.
On the other hand, users such as professionals and advanced amateurs desire a function capable of changing moving image shooting parameters not automatically but manually in order to reflect his/her specific intentions. To meet this demand, some middle- or high-grade digital cameras allow the user to change moving image shooting parameters. The moving image shooting parameter setting items include color phase, sharpness, color gain, and white balance. Storing/saving a combination of such a plurality of parameters makes it possible to save the user from re-setting them when the same settings are to be adopted the next time. However, these moving image shooting parameters are often expressed by numerical values. To reuse them, the user needs to confirm the individual parameter setting values on a parameter setting window. This complicates the user's operations. To solve this problem, it is demanded to improve that function so that the user can readily image the parameter setting contents. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-152567 achieves re-setting of shooting conditions, under which a still image has been picked-up, by selecting that still image.
Unfortunately, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 10-178584, as the number of choices of a set of shooting conditions increases, shooting condition selection itself becomes troublesome when a certain set of shooting conditions is to be reused in moving image shooting. Therefore, even though shooting conditions are associated with image data so as to facilitate selection, the number of choices cannot greatly be increased. Additionally, when a table has registered shooting conditions to its maximum capacity, if the user wants to register another shooting condition, some condition must be deleted so as to overwrite the other one on the obtained space. This inconveniences the user if he/she wants to temporarily register certain shooting conditions in shooting or to select desired ones after testing various conditions.
The method of recording shooting conditions of image data at its header portion like an Exif format cannot separately manage the image data and the shooting conditions. Therefore, if the user wants to open image data itself to the public, he/she must convert it using a dedicated tool. Still worse, a method of collectively managing shooting conditions themselves is unavailable at present.
The present invention has been made in consideration of the above problems, and has as its object to realize a technique for facilitating recording/management/reuse of shooting conditions.
When the user executes moving image shooting which requires a long recording time unlike still image shooting, he/she sometimes changes the parameter settings during shooting. In this case, a method of reading and changing preset parameters may be adopted. However, the method of selecting an image to set and change parameters as disclosed in the above-described Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-152567 complicates the operations involved during moving image shooting even though convenience for still image shooting is assured. That is, as a parameter setting image or menu window is displayed on an image display unit, it hides a moving image during shooting. This worsens the complexity of the operations involved.